Saturday Star

Wrestling for some sanity in crazy world

- LINDSAY SLOGROVE lindsay.slogrove@inl.co.za

SOMETIMES, there are too many things in the Grey Matter In-tray, and trying to get them into some sort of order is like mud-wrestling. And not in the good mud rather, the kind of mud the ellies, rhinos, buffalo, hippo and warthog have pooed in.

Like this week.

As the ’Mericans head for the mid-term elections, the mud just gets more faeces-filled. It’s like watching the Ranting Russian’s Crimea bridge being blown up, over and over. Add in his insane response – mass missiles raining on Ukrainian citizens – and you sorta get the idea.

TDFG (that’s the defeated former guy whose name shall never pass my lips) and his GOP (now commonly known as GQP for their adoption of ultra right-wing Q-anon nutjob ideas and slogans) is off his rocker and taking millions of his comrades, including hundreds who are running for state officialdo­m, with him.

It’s a punch/counter-punch, but against people who have no shame about bald-faced, blatant lying, flip-flopping, corruption, kissing TDFG’S rear and greed and hypocrisy that are off the charts. Oh, and probably selling nuclear and national security secrets to people who are not friends with most of the world.

But their elections are not the things that are so terrifying.

It’s this: frequently, when doom scrolling through Twitter, you have to read something twice or thrice to believe someone said or did that for real. Then you have to check who the poster is: is it an idiot red-neck, machine-gun-toting hill-billy; a bot; a lunar-tic billionair­e who is/not going to buy Twitter and is/not TDFG’S or Putin’s big tjommie; a wannabe government “employee”, from state to Congress, in a gerrymande­red constituen­cy? Or a vomitous “death con 4” spew from a clearly disturbed former muso who also thought he would make a good US president?

Or does it refer to one of our own lying, hypocritic­al politician­s who get free power (should that be more free power?), another Saffer-style bout of brutality or our very own TDFG who just will not either take his yearned-for bloody day in court or hunker the hell down in his own bunker?

It does my head in, and I was happy to read the jolt-sleep story on this page and learn there really is an exploding head syndrome, and it’s not just me.

This week, however, some US of A citizens raised an idea we could use here. In short, it was suggested that Columbus Day, when America was “discovered”, be used to honour the indigenous people who already knew their country was there and whose lives and livelihood­s were destroyed by the colonists. It struck me that perhaps, if ordinary folk took the trouble and time to learn something of our pre-van Riebeeck people and nation, and the hardships the early settlers faced in these harsh new lands, from people without agendas, we may have a path to reconcilia­tion.

And we can’t just rearrange the current Day of Reconcilia­tion – there is too much blood on that one. What we need is for The People to start hearing each other, acknowledg­ing that this is our country and using our power to build a real Rainbow Nation.

TOURISM contribute­d some R209 billion to the fiscus in 2019. The sector also employed 773 533 people, about one in every 21 people with a job.

But that was 2019, before Covid arrived, put a halt to travel and decimated the industry.

Now with travel and occupancy restrictio­ns consigned to the past, the industry is slowly picking itself up.

In a climate of regular power cuts, unpredicta­ble water supply in some areas and the closure of four airlines, this is no mean task.

And it is showing in the numbers. Both domestic (228%) and foreign (216%) tourism appear to be increasing in leaps and bounds, according to Stats SA data, but this is off a low base from mid-covid conditions in July, 2021.

In addition, with the festive season looming, local flight capacity is expected to be low, meaning ticket prices will reach new highs.

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